Podcasts & Poetry: Cynthia Lin (TW Diaspora) Interviews Shin Yu Pai

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  I’m thrilled Leona connected me with Shin Yu Pai for this written Q&A piece for TaiwaneseAmerican.org centered on her work as an artist, writer, and podcast host. As two podcasters, Shin Yu and I naturally gravitated to talking live after the initial Q&A. I found our conversation to be soul-enriching for those consciously on a healing journey. To listen to the audio interview, check out the podcast episode on TaiwaneseDiaspora.com (available on all major podcast apps). Shin…

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Director’s Picks: Ten Taiwan Films that Imagine Taiwanese America

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Filmmakers in Taiwan have always had their sights on the world and not just the nation. For one, the concept of nation in Taiwan is tricky, especially through decades of colonization, American influence, and rapid globalization. When we think of the globalization of Taiwanese cinema, we typically think of the international film festival success of filmmakers like Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang. But we can also observe that filmmakers in Taiwan have long travelled abroad to…

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The Roots of Disney’s “American Born Chinese”

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Maybe it's our vantage point from TaiwaneseAmerican.org that allows us to appreciate every product and project - especially a mainstream one like this - as a hard-won triumph, as a member of a lineage where people had doors opened for them, and in turn opened doors for others. As much as "representation" is a buzzy and flashy accomplishment, "opportunity" is its accompanying, more profound feat. We get to celebrate friends who have worked hard, who have overcome doubt and rejection, who have…

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Charles Yu, Shawna Yang Ryan, Alvina Ling Select 2023 Creative Writing Prize Recipients

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We are pleased to announce the 2023 cohort of honorable mentions, finalists, and grand prize winners of the Betty L. Yu & Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, established in partnership with TaiwaneseAmerican.org in honor of Yu’s parents, who are longstanding Taiwanese American community leaders. In its third year, the prize has expanded to include adult writers of all life stages. Their work will be published on TaiwaneseAmerican.org throughout the year. The Prizes are named in honor…

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“Until The Sun Rises”: Q&A with Artist & Curator Vanessa Chen

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Vanessa Chen (陳詠昕) was born and raised in Taipei. Currently finishing up the last stretch of grad school (MFA Social Practice) in D.C., she is a curator/artist who uses art as a form of advocacy and to influence policy change. Outside of art school, she is a human rights advocate and a multilingual translator for refugees, asylum seekers, victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse, and many more who are experiencing crises.  We're pleased to share this Q&A with Vanessa on her…

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Wish-Granting and Magic-Making in “When You Wish Upon a Lantern”

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In Gloria Chao’s “When You Wish Upon a Lantern,” wishes don’t magically come true. They are received with kindness, guided, and often painstakingly maneuvered “into the light.”  Born and raised in Chicago’s Chinatown, Liya Huang and Kai Jiang are childhood best friends whose families harbor a mutual dislike not unlike the Montagues and Capulets - if the Montagues and Capulets were passive-aggressive and dueled with their children instead of weapons. Still, Liya and Kai share…

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Director’s Picks: Ten Films from Taiwan to Watch

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By guest contributor Brian Hu, a film curator and educator with a focus on Asian and Asian American cinema. Where does one start with Taiwan cinema? While it was barely scraping by with a couple dozen features per year in the early 2000s, the Taiwanese film industry had once been one of the world’s biggest, churning out a combination of local Taiwanese-language productions, big propaganda epics, and Hong Kong co-productions. This is a formidable history, one that has chronicled Taiwanese…

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Why I Love “Everything Everywhere All At Once”

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  From the point of view of a Taiwanese American eighteen year old aspiring filmmaker I’ve been following “Everything Everywhere All At Once” since the first trailer released over a year ago. The trailer told me nothing about the plot of the movie, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it would be the most epic movie I had ever seen. There was a combination of factors that intrigued me: the sci-fi/Asian American immigrant mother-daughter hybrid story, the mysteriousness of the trailer,…

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Now accepting submissions: 2023 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes celebrate Taiwanese American student and adult writers

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TaiwaneseAmerican.org is pleased to announce the 2023 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes. Created in 2021 in collaboration with Taiwanese American author Charles Yu, the Prizes are intended to encourage and recognize creative literary work by Taiwanese American students, and to foster discussion and community around such work. In 2022, the prize expanded to include a separate middle school category for 6th-8th grade applicants, judged by Alvina Ling. This year, we have added an…

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“The Jennie Show” on TaiwanPlus: Animated First-Hand Telling of “Third Culture” Experiences in Taiwan

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Enjoying the best of both worlds or finding comfort in a “third culture”? A stranger in a strange land or a homecoming full of quirks and wonders? Learning about a foreign yet familiar culture or rediscovering one’s own identity? These are some of the questions Jennie explores in her return to Taiwan as experienced through her Taiwanese American lens – via Colorado, to be exact. “The Jennie Show”, a short-form animation recently released on the fast-growing global streaming platform…

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